With the days disappearing into place I am not sure it is time to turn up the speed knob and get stuff pumping. First up is I nee my damn engine in the buggy so I can loom up and water up and get a feeling of moving forward. First thing is the transmission.

For my Manxter I will be running a 758 with a Subaru Gears Reverse R&P. As I am now an authorised dealer in the USA we build our box' locally and add a few nice touches to keep them together. I will be running a 4.86R&P along with stock 758 gearing all polished checked. Case with be oversized bolts and a few custom touches.

Got started with my nose cone, got it done and dropped off to the builder, will pick up the box next week ... then it is game on ...

Once that was done I did some more work on the Octopus and buttoned it up, fired it up and closed it up.

And they just cause I liked this pictures I drooled over it some more lol

Next stop is hopefully my radiator and custom cooling etc along with the loom .

With the Motec PDM going in instead of relays and fuses etc it only seemed fair that I should step up the loom game.

The entire loom with be Tefzel Mil SPec wire in either 20, 16 or 14awg and all connectors will be Deutsch with Raychem heat shrink and epoxy / glue back sealing. Most of the heat shrink is dual wall and will be placed before heating so it conforms to the shape I want.

As I am doing what I refer to as direct pin loom the wire colours are no uses as everything is under wraps. The only exception is the ECU Loom which has open connectors for now to help with fault finding. Once I have it working I will seal them out.

Although I will spare you the details of my newest obsession in building wiring looms I will cover off on a few basics.

When remove insulation it is best to use strippers and not side cutters. Side cutters create weak points and will in most cases increase the chances of failing.

I have a dozen different sets but the most common are either the ideal aptly named strip masters units or heat stripers. the Tefzel is a bit tougher than the usual PVC wires and the cores are tin coated copper so you don't want to damage them.

Now when you build looms it is bad practice to use solder regardless of what people tell you. Solder creates a hard point which will fatige. To do branches and multi joins I either use a Deuscth Bus plug or a simple butt joint which is then 4 sided crimped. It is good practice to keep the insulation clear of the butt joint.

The loom start above is my tail light loom. I will do the lighting loom completely independent from the engine loom so there is no issues.

Once branches are done I use double walled glue backed heat shrink which is fire retardant and chemical resistant.

Once in place I can fit the plug

Add some more heat shrink

And give it some heat

Tail light loom done.

The 4 plugs are left hand tail light, number plate light, right hand tail light and trailer plug. Each of these plugs will get a tail which terminates on either the light or trailer plug. Doing it like this allows me to have a core car loom which will never change and if I change say rear lights then I simply unplug the tail and change it out for something else.

Destsch plugs are rated at over 100 cycles as opposed to say weatherpaks which are around 10. That should mean that I never have any issues.

Hopefully my Wife won't read this but to be honest I would guess that when done I will have around $500 worth of parts into the loom. If I wasn't using a PDM then I would thing probably $700 and an extra 10 hrs. It is hard to say as to get that $500 worth of parts I have well over that.

For example there are 6 x 12 Pin connectors and they are around $30 ea but need a set of HDT-48-00 crimpers that run around $250 a set. But you can't count the crimpers as they won't wear out and I have a few sets anyway so they weren't purchased for this particular job. Wiring is no different to anything else if you want to do it correctly with top notch products then tooling up costs $$$ but buy in once and have it for life.

I think at last count I had about 30 different sets of crimpers to cover off on a lot of the factory as well as aftermarket stuff.

I hear Airbus are always looking for guys to wire up the New A350 Aircraft !

Lol I think we both know from experience there is a great deal of difference between what I am doing and aircraft spec, heck the testing regime alone would send me broke not to mention the tooling, stress relief, service looping and on and on and on

Although I seem to get my stuff working in about the same time line as AirBis

Tonights aim is to keep going with the wiring loom and finish off the intake manifold.

As I am running a Subaru Steering Column I started off with the cluster and removed all the stuff I don't want. When doing this I either cut it as far up as possible or preferable de-solder it. If I ever want something like rear wipers on my Manxter then I will just use a different switch cluster. My intent with this buggy is to make it the most simplicity complicated Manxter out there. I am removing everything I don't need so there is room for the stuff I do.

Luckily I have access to all the wiring schematics from Subaru, although after printing a dozen different ones I gave up and used the multimeter

So mean while I have started on my manifold modifications. Round one is simple I just fired up the mill and cut everything off it which I don't think is needed. This should clean it up a bit and make it look cleaner. Once that was done I gave it some sand loving.

Gave the inside some polishing and flowing.

Painted it black and faced the bolt on areas.

Then it looked so pretty I figured I should really make a nice new loom for it and add a new connector

So with the electrics underway it is time to address another issue I have. On a recent trip out in the truck it became apparent that my two year old feel it is her right to kick the seat in front of her with as much force as she can muster .... hmmmm . well with a few longer trips planed for later in the year I decided this wan't real desirable. Now of course I could just smack her ass and tell her to stop, but in this day and age that would probably get me arrested So like most car guys I looked to the Buggy to give me the answer.

VWNuts wrote:Wouldn't be a Brad buggy without big holes cut in it.....

Yes and no, it wouldn't be Brad if I didn't just leave it in the corner now and come back to it later

In this case though, the Boss has spoken and there must be a Buggy for Big Bear or there will be no Big Bear, so with that in mind and this being Sunday meaning Buggy Day .... the project must move on .

So .. we do a bit of Ctrl C Ctrl V

Then since I am old and fat and can't work bending over or on the ground anymore I need to get it up to work height to fix my creation... yes in hindsight I should have just pulled the body ....

With it at work height I need something to fill in the hole I have created.